


The Bridge

by Alona



Category: Clover - CLAMP
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-20
Updated: 2016-11-20
Packaged: 2018-09-01 02:51:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,396
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8604280
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Alona/pseuds/Alona
Summary: Suu is gone—but Ran doesn't think she's dead, and he's going to find her.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Samizdat](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Samizdat/gifts).



_i._

There was fog, and there was a voice, singing. In the dream, the smell of the fog and the song were one. Ran breathed in the song; the fog floated through his head.

Then he woke. Drenched in sweat, chilled, he sat up gasping. 

He knew that voice. In lingered still, almost a physical presence, the last wisps of it curling around him before slipping away. 

There had been a bridge. A bridge sketched by the lights of cars passing along it in the darkness and the fog. A bridge across emptiness. 

And, distant, walking away from him, a girl. 

* * *

_ii._

"How? How could they do it?" Kazuhiko said. He was going to smash that teacup, if he kept gripping it like that. "How could she do it?"

It interested Ran that Kazuhiko never asked "why"—only "how." He wondered why that was. The whole picture must look so different to Kazuhiko—so many gaps he did not know were gaps. Or did he suspect? Probably he could not imagine a "why" that would make any sense of it for him. 

"Who do you mean?" asked Ran. 

Kazuhiko made an irritated noise and did not answer. 

He had left the hospital as soon as he could walk—before that, really. Though he had refused Gingetsu's offer to stay with him and Ran while he recovered, he was there most days—sitting on the couch, mostly, by turns irritably listless and breathlessly frantic. This was a frantic moment. He liked to try to talk at these moments. Ran listened. 

"The Wizards were doing what they thought was for the best," Ran tried. 

Kazuhiko snorted. It sounded like a sob. "Keeping a child locked up for the crime of being born? Sending her to die? You think that's for the best? You think anyone—?"

Ran felt the pressure on the mock-porcelain of the cup mount, grow almost unbearable. It would shatter in another moment. "Let me take that," he said, holding out his hands for it. "It's cold."

Kazuhiko uncurled rage-stiffened fingers from around the cup and handed it over, wordless. He caught a glimpse of the leaf printed on his left palm, curled his hand into a fist, and brought it down forcefully onto his leg. 

"It's not fair. She never had a chance!" he said, with sudden feverish vehemence. 

Ran looked at the cup in his hands. It was pale blue, with yellow and white flowers. One of a pair. Most of their crockery was mismatched. Gingetsu bought it at junk stalls for petty change when he was on his way home. Ran's eyes flickered up to Kazuhiko's strained, unhappy face. Then he shrugged and went into the kitchen to brew more tea. He kept the cup in both hands, and did not reach back over his shoulder to touch the clover leaf tattoo until he was out of sight. 

Kazuhiko, left alone, looked around the room for something to distract him. It had been like this when Oruha died—however much he tried, he could not always be thinking of something else; and any time he was not acting, not talking, not distracted, the weight of his own thoughts, even his own presence, suffocated him. He needed constant reminders that things outside of himself were real. 

It was difficult to feel alone, anyway, in Gingetsu and Ran's home. There was always the sound of Ran unhurriedly, deliberately busying himself with something (faucet running, metal scoop clattering against the rim of a tin of tea leaves, the shuffle of light steps). And there was the mess. Papers and wires and dismantled technology, books and tools and mismatched pillows, shoes with holes worn in their soles and unraveling laces crouching under the furniture. Kazuhiko had been astounded at first; Gingetsu, a military man, was so tidy. He had even asked Gingetsu if it bothered him. 

Gingetsu had said, "Why should it? Ran likes it this way. He's the one who has to look at it." 

Kazuhiko had found that he liked the clutter, too. It was a kind of luxury, he thought, not entirely sure what he meant by that. 

* * *

_iii._

The fog lit, pale gray at the edges—dawn coming. 

Dawn would reveal the bridge. 

Ran, standing on a pier with black water lapping indistinctly above as well as below him, knew that when the light came, that bridge would be no bridge. The lights on it began to look dim, compared to the day. 

The song was everywhere. If he turned around, he would see her standing just behind him, singing. He turned. There was no one. Only the empty pier, the whole rusted metal length of it stretching back into the fog, disappearing before it reached the unseen, unknown land. 

* * *

_iv._

"Is he any better?" asked Gingetsu.

"He says he feels better," said Ran. "I don't know, though."

"You don't mind? Babysitting him, I mean."

"You already asked me that. I wish I could help him."

He could not explain how strangely old he felt sometimes, talking to Kazuhiko. Old and responsible. Was it like that—had it been that way—for Suu? A child, alone all her life, but knowing so much; sheltered, kept in ignorance—but helplessly open to all the movements and pains of the world. 

"What's wrong?" Gingetsu asked, sitting down beside Ran. "Or don't you want to talk about it?"

Ran shook his head. "I've been having dreams—feelings. That child—Suu. She's still…—I hear her. I can feel her." 

After a silence, Gingetsu spoke. "Clovers do regenerate. Even two-leafs. No one does know for sure what happens when a four-leaf…"

"The Wizards would have made sure."

"There's only so much they can know. However much they tried. Where is she?" A beat. "Is she alive?"

"She's lost," Ran said. "She was so ready to die. She's very close, but she can't find her way to—wherever." 

"Or doesn't want to?"

Ran shrugged fretfully. 

Gingetsu waited. He knew Ran had not said everything he meant to say. A momentous, weighty "and then" hung in the air. But Ran did not say anything. 

"So?"

Sitting up straight, Ran said, "I'm going to find her."

"You."

"I think I'm the only one who can. I'm not sure. Maybe even I…"

Nothing else. 

"Do you have to?"

Again, the question was not "why"—though it was there in his voice. Then again, it would have been a useless question. Gingetsu, if anyone, knew why. 

She never had a chance! Kazuhiko had said. 

"No, I don't have to. But I'm going to." 

Gingetsu stood and crossed to the window. After a moment, Ran looked up. There was, apparently, nothing to be read in the stiff propriety of Gingetsu's broad back, but Ran smiled faintly. Then the expression flickered and faded away. He waited.

Finally, Gingetsu spoke. 

"You'll need my help."

"Yes."

"And I can't come with you."

"No."

"The council…"

"If they find out—I know. But I'm not going anywhere in this world."

"I'll hold them off. If I have to."

That was nonsense. Gingetsu had to know that, but Ran let it hang in the air uncontested. He got to his feet and slowly went to the window, too. The night was lit with all the lights of the earth. The sky was not black, but a dull, glowing orange, strong even against the light in the room. 

"I don't know if it will come to that," he said, finally. "I might not find her. I might…"

"What is it?"

"I'll try to come back."

Gingetsu turned and looked back at him, then. "We wouldn't be able to tell him, whatever happened." 

"No." And that, too, was not fair. It seemed to be Kazuhiko's role, not to know. Ran had not said anything about Oruha, either; he was not even sure that Gingetsu had known of her oncoming death—the certainty, the nearness. She had known. 

Could she ever have had a chance? Ran wondered, no longer thinking of Oruha. 

"Now?" asked Gingetsu.

"Tomorrow. Early. She always feels closest around dawn." 

* * *

_v._

Sleepless, Ran slipped back into the living room long before dawn and sat with his head against the windowpanes, half seeing the light glancing off the rain-slick pavements, half attending to the tenuous thread he could not quite grasp, which he believed he could follow to Suu. 

Does she want to be found? he thought. Am I doing it for her?

She never had a chance. Yes, Kazuhiko had said that—but Suu had believed she had had a choice, at least. Where did that leave Ran?

* * *

_vi._

He had fallen asleep after all.

The bridge, again—always. Blurred lights travelling up and down a thread suspended in darkness. Water, unseen. Suu, singing to herself. She could never sing for anyone else. 

He could almost see her—at the end of the pier now, a whiteness in the gloom, trailing wings and ribbons. 

Ran tried to call out, but he could not make a sound. He would have reached out his hand to her, but she was receding, or he was. 

Just before he woke—already he heard the busy patter of rain, felt the cool glass against his face—she turned. 

* * *

_vii._

Ran came to himself standing, reaching out with one hand. A stormy green-white dawn was beginning somewhere behind the massed clouds. The room was dark. 

"Leave the light off," he said, hearing Gingetsu approach. 

"Now?"

"Now."

Gingetsu, already immaculately dressed, came to stand beside him. He laid a hand on Ran's shoulder. 

"Should I wish you good luck?"

Ran smiled gently. "You'll need it more."

Then he closed his eyes and reached. 

He was always aware of Gingetsu's power—there to reach for at need, but less like power than a feeling of being tethered. A lifeline. Even as he drew on that line to extend his reach he felt it stretch to its limits. Where he was going, to find Suu, it would not reach him. 

When he was alone, he opened his eyes. 

* * *

**1\. Escape**

The flat sound of the outdoors was what he noticed first. He had not felt it in the dreams. This felt real, and frightening. 

He was already walking. 

His footsteps were clear and ringing in the wide silence. His slippers had become thick boots, and he was wearing a long coat, sensible for the weather of this place.

There was a chill in the air. It was dawn here, or maybe evening twilight. Somewhere, at least, there was a hint of blue in the dark. A thick wet mist coated everything, obscuring. Yellow streetlamps spaced far apart caught rushing eddies of mist in their beams and revealed nothing else. Buildings, purple-black against the blue-gray of the world, raised jagged cliffs around the valleys of the streets. A stinging, fitful breeze rustled scraps of litter in the gutters. 

From time to time a sound like the lowing of a vast beast came out of the darkness. Ran thought it was a foghorn. He felt certain that this place was high up over the sea, though he had never known the sea. He welcomed the noise, because it gave him a sense of direction. The streets were arranged in no pattern, and they went up and down unpredictably. He could feel himself getting lost, as if the streets were winding and reshuffling around him. Maybe they were. 

The mist became drizzling rain, became mist again, hovered between the two states as he walked. The blueness in the sky did not grow less or more. Others passed. He heard but did not see them; they were always a street or two away, moving quickly, not talking. They went alone, or in pairs. They were afraid. 

He had known that he would not be able to feel Suu's presence once he was here. A three-leaf could not sense a four-leaf on his own. 

Then at the end of a twisting alley he saw something clearly—a door propped open, spilling a sharp triangle of golden light. It seemed to cut up the mist. He went to it. The door exhaled heat and smoke, and the sounds of many overlapping voices came to Ran's ears, talking, laughing, arguing—and, a strong current under the ripples, one voice singing. He went inside. 

The golden light filled a short passage with a greasy, threadbare carpet on the floor and dusty, cracked mirrors hanging on the walls. Glass from the mirrors crunched under Ran's boots. At the end of the passage there was a pair of double doors carved in whorls and stars. The sounds were all coming from behind those doors. Ran carefully pushed one open a crack and looked in. 

He was at the back of a dim hall filled with people and cigarette smoke. There was a stage at the front, a large stage of bare wooden boards. The place had once been opulent, but it had all gone to ruin. Theater boxes, many of them with torn curtains or missing their railings, lined the upper walls. Carved pillars reached up to the shadowy ceiling, where a painted starry sky was flaking off among tarnished brass fittings. Along the lower walls strips of wallpaper had come unstuck, and the corners were filled with dust and rubbish. None of the people seemed to notice the decay. There were so many of them, dressed in ragged, once-fine clothing. They filled the scattered tables and chairs between Ran and the stage, or went from table to table, or leaned against the grimy walls. There were marks on the cement floor that showed where rows of chairs had been bolted down and removed.

It was Oruha up there on the stage. She was singing a song Ran did not know, with her own lovely voice. He had been refusing to recognize it. Wherever Suu was, he knew that Oruha was dead. 

But there she was. She had her hair caught up and wound through a silvery net, and she wore a long, heavy dress of immaculate blackness. Her song was coming to a crescendo, and throughout the room people were hushing to listen. 

Ran searched the crowd. At a table near the front sat a man who was unmistakably Kazuhiko, gazing up raptly at the singer. He was alone at his table. 

Then Ran looked up. There, in one of the boxes, was the faint pale shape of a crouching girl. She, too, was watching Oruha. 

The song ended. 

There was a roar of approval that fell to murmurs, gasps, and the creaking of chairs as the girl in the box flowed to her feet and began to clap. She clapped wildly, a joyous and fearful noise, all her being evidently trained on the singer. Everyone stared up at her, growing more and more still in their amazement. 

Oruha paused, a surprised, glad look on her face. Then she bowed. It was a bow aimed only at that clapping girl. 

That broke the spell. The rest of the audience took up the applause. Some people came up to the foot of the stage offering wilted bouquets—real flowers, not synthetics. Oruha scooped them into her arms, bowed once more, and vanished backstage. 

At the same time, Suu slipped into the darkness of her box. Ran, listening through the tumult of ongoing applause, mapped the back ways by the sounds of Oruha and Suu taking their separate paths. Then he left through a door in the side wall.

The lights in this passage were flickering or dead, and it was narrow, one of a warren of passages with floors that went up and down, linked by plaster steps or wooden ramps. It was just like the maze of the streets, shrunken down to the scale of a building. Ran stopped trying to make rational decisions and took turns on instinct. He was just in time to see Suu catch Oruha up at the door of her dressing room. 

"You were wonderful tonight," Suu said, drifting shyly towards Oruha with her head lowered. "You're always wonderful. You're more beautiful than I ever imagined. I wish I could stay here forever, listening to you."

Oruha smiled. "Thank you. I rarely get such genuine praise."

Ran stayed where he was, out of sight behind the curve of the wall. Now that he was close to her, he knew what was really bothering him about Oruha: he could not sense her Clover at all. And then, he could not bear to interrupt this meeting, however it came to be. 

"I can take it back now," Suu said. 

Oruha answered, "I've kept it safe for you."

"Thank you." 

"Are you sure? It's a great burden for a little girl. For anyone." 

"I'm sure. And it's mine. It always has been."

"Who told you that?"

Suu shook her head. 

Smiling sadly, almost bitterly, now, Oruha reached into her hair and pulled out—what?—a jeweled pin?—something, anyway, that shone with unbearable light between her fingers. She took Suu's hand and pressed the object into it, folding Suu's fingers around it. The light dimmed a little. 

Then Oruha put her arms around Suu and held her close. "Are you sure you can't stay and talk a little?" she asked. "Meet Kazuhiko?"

"No, I'm sorry," said Suu. "I have to go. Thank you… for everything." 

Then Oruha released her. There were tears standing in her eyes, and tears shining on Suu's face. Ran looked away. He heard the dressing room door close. When he looked back, Suu and Oruha had both gone. He went on.

One turn, two turns, and he almost walked straight into Kazuhiko. 

"Hey, watch where you're going! You haven't been bothering the star performer, have you?" Kazuhiko stood back, with a somewhat unfriendly grin on his face. He clearly did not recognize Ran. 

"I'm sorry. I'm about to lose someone," said Ran. "I hope very much you'll be happy here."

And he left a now very puzzled Kazuhiko behind. 

He was still not sure what was happening, but he did not think these visions of Kazuhiko and Oruha were real. He was not sure about the place, either. But Suu—she was real. Ran followed what he thought was her path down smashed marble steps and into a grimy lobby, then out a still-grand entrance under an awning with more than half its bulbs dead. 

The theater stood on one side of a large square. The opposite side, across eddies of mist and heaps of rubble, was filled by a building fronted by an imposing pillared entrance with a clock above it. A train station: the foghorn noises were coming from the trains. Suu, wings extended, floated lightly over the wreckage of statues and fountains and flower beds until she reached the station. She went inside. 

Ran picked his way through the rubble after her. Did she know he was there? She must. Was she leading him, or running from him? What did she know about this strange place, and what burden had Oruha given back to her?

The inside of the station was less derelict than the theater, mainly because it was so empty. There was only a pale tiled floor so highly polished it shone even through a layer of dust under the strip lights hanging from the high ceiling. Windows with arched tops and many intricate panes rose all around. A sign pointed the way to the platforms. 

There had been no one in the entrance hall, but on the first platform he came to Ran found clutches of people, huddling and murmuring together as they boarded the puffing, grinding train. Many of the panes of the glass ceiling overhead were broken, and water was pouring through them—the mist had become rain in earnest, it seemed. There were at least half a dozen more platforms, stretching away across the vast space, but they were dark and abandoned. 

The passengers, without being very numerous, moved so slowly and erratically that they impeded Ran's progress. There was a sense of exhausted desperation among them, as if they were running from something that could not be outrun. There had been a similar feeling in the theater, though Ran had not paid attention to it then. 

Suu was climbing into a car near the middle of the train. Ran had nearly caught up to her now. He saw her hand a slip of paper to a train attendant—a ticket? Was that what Oruha had given her? That could not be right. But Suu had not had anything else with her. 

The lowing sound came again, stiflingly loud. The last passengers climbed aboard. 

Ran wondered whether he would need a ticket. But the train rattled to life and began to move with a pained grinding, so he climbed on regardless. The attendant shouldered him aside to slide the door shut. Suu did not seem to be avoiding Ran any longer; she was standing at the front of the compartment, where the seats ended, looking out a window. Ran walked past the seats only partly full of passengers to stand beside her and look, too. He caught a last glimpse of the station before the train was swallowed by a black tunnel. Feeble lights stuttered on inside the train car. 

"What is this place?" he asked quietly. "Did you make it?"

Suu glanced at him out of the corner of her eye. "Yes. You made it, too." 

Murky light filtered down from somewhere high above, the shafts revealing ancient-looking cables and pipes making inelegant scrawls over the tunnel wall. 

"Is it real?"

"Look," Suu said, pointing. 

Ran looked. Ahead of them there was a light approaching. The end of the tunnel, it must be, but the sky above, as he had seen it last, had been the same unchanging deep blue, uncertain whether it was a prelude to day or night. 

Then they were passing out into the light. Ran was blinded. 

* * *

**2\. Resistance**

Shapes resolved slowly out of the brightness, like interference clearing from a screen. The train compartment had changed. It was clean and glistening; white and pale green were the dominant colors, with streaks of silver here and there, all lit by a uniform white light, almost like daylight. Below that, the workings of the train had changed, too. Before, they had been straining, ill-kept; now Ran could feel the sleek harmony of well-made, well-kept parts working all around him. Beyond the shell of the train, he sensed—he did not really know what. 

The people may or may not have been the same as before—he had not been able to see them clearly; in any case, they were wearing neat, light-colored clothes now, not the rags they had been wearing before. Suu, still standing at the window, wore a white jacket with a small cape over her white dress, and Ran's coat had become a pale gray suit. 

Ran looked out the window to see where they had come out. He took an involuntary step back. 

Then, wondering, he stepped close and looked out again. There was a line of hard black sky above, meeting softer blue somewhere below eye level. The ground was so far below that Ran could see the curve of it. It was night down there, clusters and threads of light sketching vast cities and filling in emptiness. In front and behind he saw a thin, shining rail stretching around the world—the track of this train. Also, behind him, he could see a white pillar stretching up from the earth to the rail. A flickering false memory insisted that he had just come up that pillar in an elevator before getting on this train. 

Ran shook his head. His memory cleared. 

"There you are."

He looked up, not sure why he should be so instantly alarmed at the sound of that voice. Then—and it was really impossible—he saw General Ko of the council some feet away from him, sitting in a sleek motorized chair flanked by two military-looking women in dull green. Everything went small and flat in Ran's mind. 

"The fugitive," said General Ko, calmly, "is certainly aboard this train, inspector. You are up to the task?"

No wonder he had recognized the voice. It was like a razor sharp wire wrapped with cotton. General Ko, so familiar though he had not spoken to her for years, had not seen her in the flesh for far longer. Of all the Wizards, she had taken the most personal interest in the Clovers during the testing, the children especially—talking to them, asking if there was any small thing she could do to make them more comfortable. And she had meant it, too. A kind woman, General Ko, as she understood kindness. Ran felt sick, remembering it. 

Suu was not moving. She was looking at him, not at General Ko. Her expression told him nothing. 

"Will you remind me, please?" he said. His voice sounded dry and distant. It can't really be her, he thought. Some dream-figment—a stray piece of memory. This whole place is made of memory. 

"There is a stowaway aboard this train. A very dangerous one. He means to bring down everything this government has built. He has stolen a precious object that was being transported. It is vital that he be apprehended before this train reaches its destination two hours from now. Your superiors indicated that you were best suited for the job. That is why they sent you up at the last platform, isn't it?"

"Yes. Of course." 

"And this—your assistant?"

Her gesture was aimed at Suu, who now had a slim tablet in one hand with a stylus poised uncertainly above it. She did not look like anyone's assistant, all the same, but Ran said, "Yes. We'll go and look for him now." 

"We appreciate your help, inspector," said General Ko. 

One of the military-looking women offered to transfer the relevant documents to Suu's tablet. When this was done, Suu and Ran moved through a silently sliding door to the next compartment, where the lights were dimmed for a sleep period; the resting passengers turned over uneasily in their sleep. Ran and Suu went on to the next one, which was the dining car. Here they found a table. A synthetic flower in a delicate glass vase stood on the table. Someone had a lot of confidence in the train's stability—there was nothing to hold the vase in place. A machine waiter with a matte silvery body and lightly clicking joints served them tea in white porcelain cups with thin gold rims. 

"Where is this train going?" Ran asked. It seemed to be the easiest of all the questions filling his head. He had a struggle keeping the rest from pouring out all at once. He had not noticed how badly rattled he was, and had been from the very beginning.

"The capital city," said Suu. "The whole world is one country down there, with one government. That's strange, isn't it? It says here." She pointed to a document open on her tablet. "Are you going to do what she said?"

"Look for this fugitive? It'll be better for him if we're the ones to find him."

"Are you angry at Grandma Ko?"

"Aren't you?"

Suu looked down at the smooth, smooth tabletop. Her brows knit together. "She was nice to me. She tried to help me. None of this is her fault." 

Ran could not answer that. "Can you tell where he is? The fugitive."

She looked up in wide-eyed surprise. "Of course. Can't you?" 

He could. The wrongness of it had been setting his teeth on edge as much as General Ko's sudden appearance. There was someone else very familiar aboard this train. 

"Does it say in that what he's meant to have stolen?"

"No."

"Can I look at that?"

Suu slid the tablet across the table to him. Ran opened a file at random, but he did not read it. He drank his tea and slowly cleared his mind. He had thought, in a panicked moment, that this place was built of memory. He wondered about that now. It did not feel like the whole answer. And Suu—she was not surprised to see him; nor did she seem unhappy that he was here. He felt oddly shy of her. They had met so briefly in life—We're not dead, he thought firmly, I'm not dead—and he had known so much about her, without knowing her at all. 

She was looking out into the dining car, vaguely watching the handful of other diners. She had that distant look of being wrapped in her own thoughts, her small face all turned inwards. When Ran had been watching her for a moment she tilted her head a little and met his eyes. 

"I knew about you," she whispered. "I'm sorry. I couldn't help it."

"It's all right," Ran said, automatically. "You don't have to apologize." 

"Oh," said Suu. 

"We should go after him now. Or do you want to drink that?"

"No, let's go. I'm not sure how long…" She trailed off, looking around the dining car again. 

Ran had a sudden dizzy sense of the frailness, the hollowness of his surroundings. Not because he was on a train threading through space on a rail miles above the ground—it was the whole world that was thin and precarious. 

Then Suu hunched her shoulders as if hoisting a weight onto them, and the world felt real and firm again. 

They went on in the direction they had already been going, passing through car after car. Some of the passengers watched them without curiosity. A couple of the train attendants asked questions that tailed off into, "The inspector, of course." 

Then they were at the door of the baggage car. There was a lock on this door, but it had already been disabled. 

"I'd like everyone to keep clear," Ran told the nearest attendant. 

So everyone was cleared out of the next two cars, with hardly any grumbling and a few baleful looks. Then Ran, with Suu a step behind him, went into the baggage car. 

All the baggage had been shoved to one side in a heap that touched the ceiling. The car looked bewilderingly large, empty as it was of any other fittings. And at the far end—

Though he knew better, at first Ran thought he was looking at himself, younger and smaller, but of course, it was A. It could not have been anyone else. He was dressed just as Ran had seen him last. He had a long, thin case clutched in both hands.

"You can't have it!" he said. He had been sitting with his feet drawn under him; now he sprang up, still holding tightly to the case, his back against the far wall. 

"We aren't going to give it to the Wizards," said Ran. He felt like he was speaking the words of a script. He was also suddenly very tired. 

A glared at him, mistrustful, furious, apparently not recognizing him. "You're lying," he said. "I can make you go away. I can hurt you."

Ran had seen his own file from the Clover Leaf Project once. He had not precisely asked Gingetsu, but he had been curious to see it, and Gingetsu had obtained it for him—presumably with the tacit consent of the Wizards. "C is well-behaved and quiet, not like A. He does not make any trouble." And more along those lines. Well, what else had he expected? Of course he was the compliant brother—the one who did not make trouble for the Wizards or anyone else. That was why he had been allowed to see the file, after all. 

Suu stepped delicately around him—when had he begun to sag against the door frame?—and walked to the center of the compartment. Past her slim back, Ran saw A tense, watching her approach. 

"It's hurting you," she said. "Please. It's meant to be mine." 

"You can't have it," A repeated, less certainly. "Who are you, anyway? Why are you doing their bidding? Don't you know what they did to me?"

"I know." She said it so simply, so quietly, that it could not have been anything but the truth. For an instant A's expression was stricken, open, and there was pain under it; then the anger came flooding back. Suu continued: "I can't understand everything it meant to you. No one can. But… I know." 

"They did it to you, too, didn't they?" said A, advancing towards her now with a gleam of horrible triumph in his eyes. "That's why you know. So why are you helping them!"

Ran saw her shoulders come up, saw the raw hurt in the new curve of her neck. "I'm not, I—I—"

"Leave her alone," Ran said. 

"I can destroy them, with this. Don't you want that?" A looked suddenly past Suu, directly into Ran's eyes. "Both of you?"

"That's not what it's for," said Suu. "Not the way you mean it. Can't you feel that?" 

"Admit it," said A, confident now, coming up close to Suu. Their eyes were almost on a level. He gave her a grim smile. "You hate them, too."

"No." It was barely even a whisper. 

"Admit it!" 

"I can't. It's not true."

A nodded, satisfied, as if this was just the answer he had wanted. With some lingering reluctance, he held the case out to Suu, who took it very carefully and hugged it against her chest. 

"Don't disappoint me." Then he smiled, a pure, warm smile aimed at Ran. "I'll always be looking out for you, brother," he said. And then he was gone. 

Ran was left with a very familiar feeling of desolation. He found he did not care very much what it was Suu was holding. 

"We have to get it outside," said Suu. "I'm sorry, but it's important." 

They went on into the next compartment, where a deceptively simple-looking mechanism bearing the label "Danger: Airlock" took up most of the space. There was no one there. Ran had no difficulty convincing the thing to open. Then there was vast emptiness before them. Ran and Suu each held to a vertical railing bracketed to either side of the opening, or they would have been pulled out. There was a faint energy field keeping the air from rushing out—Suu's power, Ran realized, not a part of the train's mechanism. 

"Help me open it," said Suu, holding out the case. 

Together they worked the clasp, and the lid came up. Whatever was in there was covered by a thin cloth. Suu stretched her arm out into the nothing outside the train and turned the case over. Whatever had been in it came pouring out—dust?—earth?—and made a translucent veil over the lights below. The veil burst with pinpoint flames as it spread and lowered over the world. It reminded Ran of something—the bridge that was only light hanging in the darkness. Where was that place?

For a moment Ran thought they should both leap out into space, too, following the fiery veil. Then he hit the button that closed the outer door. 

They were left standing in the small inner lock as new air was pumped into it. 

"What is this place?" he asked again. "Is it real?"

"Why did you come to find me?" Suu countered. 

Ran could not answer. He thought of what Kazuhiko had said, and it blurred in his mind with what the shade of A—or A himself, it might have been—had just said. 

"This place…" Suu began. "It happened because you had a wish. You wished that we would not be hurt—Kazuhiko and me. So when I tried to die, I went to this place instead. You made it, and I did. When you came here, it began to move." 

"I didn't know…" He stopped. He could taste again the panic and the crushing resignation that had come over him when he had understood that Suu had never meant to come back from Fairy Park. He should have known it all along. What had he not known?

But Suu was following her own line of thought, and she supplied the rest: "That we could do that. No, I didn't know either. I don't think I could have done it alone."

"Would you have been trapped here, if I hadn't come?"

"I don't know. No. I think I would have just… drifted away, eventually." She closed her eyes. "That would be very peaceful."

Ran wondered if he should apologize for any of it, but he could not make up his mind. 

* * *

**3\. Support**

He still had not made it up when they were suddenly in a very different place. They were not on a train anymore, not the sleek train skimming high above the earth, and not the old, rattling train groaning through its tunnel. They were outdoors, in darkness flickering with warm light, surrounded by tents and the smells of cooking food and unwashed people. 

"Go on, get out of here!" someone said, close by. "We don't want any beggars hanging around." 

Then Ran found he was being herded away from the tents by a large man. The man muttered, "Thieves and murderers, too, probably." A few other people nearby jeered. Ran, startled but not afraid, backed away until he tripped over something in the dark and fell into a ditch. He sat looking up at the grassy lip of the ditch, worrying that Suu was not with him anymore, until she reached down her hand to help him up. 

When he was back on his feet, they walked a little away from the camp—it was obviously a camp, he could see wagons among the tents, and, amazingly, real living horses tethered off to one side. The flickering light came from fires throughout the camp. The whole thing stretched out a long way. People in many bulky layers of clothing moved darkly across the firelight. There was food being cooked, songs being sung, stories being told. Many people were very merry, probably drunk. 

Ran and Suu were not wearing bulky clothing. They were dressed in rags. Ran had a sort of cloak that he insisted on giving to Suu. He was too alert to notice any cold. 

"Where do all the other people come from?" he said, thinking aloud more than asking. "We've both seen people we recognize. Does that mean everyone else we see is someone we've come near but can't remember, because we didn't notice them closely at the time? Or are they just—like the places? And the animals…" For he could hear chickens, too, clucking sleepily, and dogs playfully snapping at each other. Beyond the bounds of the light cast by the camp, there were the sounds of birds—hooting, warbling, singing. They sounded something like synthetic ones, but very different from them, too.

And from the landscape, now that they were away from the smells coming from the fires, rose a thick scent: wet, sleeping, living earth. When Ran had been very small, he had visited an enclosed garden; it had smelled something like this, but not so clean and not so wild. There were streams trickling out there, and a forest. A little farther on, the jagged tops of mountains were a darker blackness against the incredibly black and star-scattered sky. 

"I think you're right," said Suu. "The people—they must be real, too. But we don't know what they're like…"

"There must be something here we need. Probably in that camp. Let's walk around it. There should be somewhere we can slip in without them noticing." 

They walked in silence. Did I really do this? Ran thought. But how could I have, without meaning to? He wondered if they would ever come to the end of it; not the camp, but this strange series of unreal, real-seeming places. It could not go on forever—it felt like it had an end. What were they working towards?

"You didn't want me to come after you," he said finally. 

Suu was quiet for so long that he thought she did not mean to answer. Then she said, "Are you really angry? At the Wizards, I mean." 

Ran took his time answering now. That was the rhythm of their conversation. The silences were in their own way part of the answer. Finally, he said, "Sometimes." It was a hard thing for him to say. The well-behaved brother, the quiet brother—he should not be angry, or at least he should never admit to it. So what if the Wizards had all but killed him putting him in the cage? He was meant to understand, and accept, because of what he was. And hadn't they given him a choice, after all? But he was angry. He had to be. He said, "They never gave you a chance." Giving her Kazuhiko's words, which had been meant for her anyway. 

The camp was a large one. They had found the road in the dark—a dirt track only, with two deep ruts—and many of the people had crawled into their tents or wrapped themselves up in blankets, and Ran and Suu still had not gone all the way around it. 

They left the road again, near the part of the camp where the horses were tethered. Suu passed among them; they stretched out their necks to nuzzle her arms and her hair and made soft noises. Ran kept his distance. 

"I saw my mother."

Ran stopped. He could not stand to look at Suu, so he looked out into the darkness beyond the camp instead. 

Suu continued: "Back there, when that man told us to go away. I didn't think I would remember her face, but I do."

He supposed it was as much of an answer as she could give him. 

A little way beyond the horses there was one fire where the people showed no signs of breaking for the night. There were about a dozen of them gathered close around it, drinking out of tin cups and sliding from filthy song to eerie story to genial argument. Their clothes were very peculiar: all of them wore loose, bulky clothes, in many bright colors among which blue and red predominated, with here and there some fur, but most of them were also wearing bits of armor or machinery: helmets, braces on their necks or arms, sliding plates over their chests or backs. All of it looked very old, and as if it had been scavenged from many sources. 

"Who's out there?" a creaking voice from around the fire called. "Come into the light."

Ran stepped forward. The voice did not sound threatening. 

"Children shouldn't wander around at night by themselves," said the old woman who had spoken—a total stranger, as far as Ran could tell. Most of the people around this fire were elderly. 

"Is it all right if we join you, grandmother?" Ran asked. 

There was a general chorus inviting them to sit down. A space was made for them beside the first old woman, and Suu and Ran sat. 

"Do you mind if I ask questions?" said Suu. 

"Ask away!" the old woman said. 

"Then—where are you all going? And why?"

"We're the Emperor's Progress," said the old woman in a dreamy voice. "We're going to plant the seed that will restore the world. How do you like that? We've been traveling for a long time, since the disaster, looking for the right place to plant it. We're almost there now." 

"The seed that will restore the world…" Suu repeated, with uncertain emphasis. 

"Don't believe me?"

"We believe you," said Ran. So that was what they needed. Were they just supposed to steal it? Of course, it did not matter, because none of these people were real—unless they were. He asked, "How will you know where the right place is?"

"We'll know. Our Emperor is wise."

"He keeps the seed with him always," one of the old men added. "In the imperial tent, the largest, in the very center of the camp."

"Are you very excited to plant it?" asked Suu. 

"We're very tired of traveling. Most of us were only children when we started."

"And we were almost there even then…" someone whispered. The others ignored that. 

The old people stayed up for hours after that, talking and singing. Suu picked up the words and sang along. They asked her to sing a song of her own, but she would not. She sat and stared at the fire, mostly. Someone brought out a complicated instrument that played shrill, surprisingly beautiful music. After a couple of songs someone from further into the camp yelled for them to stop making that racket. 

Gradually they all went to sleep. The fire was banked, like the other fires in the camp. Suu and Ran carefully, quietly got up and left. Ran thought he sensed the old woman who had welcomed them watching them leave. He looked back, in time to see her looking away with a wink. 

"Are we really going to do it?" he whispered. 

"I have an idea about that. Can't you feel this place? Doesn't it feel—right?"

It did. Ran remembered the rich scent of the living earth. It had almost smelled as if it were waiting. "I think I know what you mean."

"We can plant it for them. Right here."

"You think they'll never stop on their own, don't you."

"I think… They were waiting for the world to recover, really. Did you see how deep the tracks in the road were? There's no one else out there. They've been going around in circles. All this time."

She sounded very sure of it now. Ran did not ask her how she knew. They were passing through a place where people were sleeping close together, with very little path left between them. Ran chose his steps carefully to avoid sprawled arms and legs. Suu had begun to float gently above the ground. Did her wings look different than before? Softer? It must be the darkness. 

The imperial tent was not hard to find. It was less like a tent than a very temporary house. Its canvas walls had been draped over square pieces of plastic that showed through at the gaps. There was a hole in the roof, with smoke curling out of it. A guard stood in an attentive posture at the entrance, which was lit by a lantern attached to a tall stake. 

Ran and Suu approached, crouching behind the wheels of a baggage-laden wagon when they were close enough to be seen. 

"There might be another entrance on the other side," Ran whispered. 

Suu shook her head. Just then, a tall man came up to the guard. The two of them exchanged bows, and the man took up guarding. Before the first guard had gone out of earshot, Ran was already standing up, bewildered but relieved. He had recognized the walk, the set of the shoulders. The new guard was Gingetsu. 

"Come on," he said. "It's all right."

Suu only paused for a moment before following him out into the open. 

"Who's there?" asked Gingetsu. It was strange to see him in the same colorful, bulky clothes as the others. He wore a sort of visor that looked as old and patched together as all the other machinery in the camp. There was a sword in a battered sheath hanging at his side. 

"Do you know me?" said Ran, hesitating. 

"No. Should I?"

"I guess not. We came here…" Ran paused, very conscious of Suu standing at his shoulder, seeming calm and unworried. Confidently, he said, "We came to take the seed." 

"You're thieves, then?"

"No. You're guarding it?"

"And the Emperor."

"We came to ask you to give it to us." 

"Why would I do that?"

"Because… Because you know that the Emperor's Progress has been going around in circles. You know you'll never stop, if someone doesn't take the seed and plant it. Because we can do just that. Or she can," he finished, nodding at Suu.

Gingetsu looked at her calmly, eyebrows slightly raised. "Is that true?"

She nodded firmly. 

Gingetsu turned back to Ran. "I trust you. Isn't that strange?"

"I don't think so," said Ran, smiling. "I thought you might." 

"You expect me to go in there—" he gestured at the flap of the tent behind him "—and just bring you the seed?"

"That's right." 

Frowning, Gingetsu said, "I'll do it. Be ready to run once you have it." Then he vanished into the tent. 

"Why did you do that?" asked Suu. She did not sound angry, only curious. 

"Because I knew I could trust him, of course."

"Even if he isn't really Gingetsu?"

Ran shrugged. "Maybe I didn't think it through. But I didn't feel like I was taking a chance at all." 

The flap of the tent rustled slightly, and Gingetsu emerged, carrying something that looked like a pink plastic egg. He held it out to Ran, who nodded at Suu. She took the egg. It was just large enough that she had to cup it with both hands. 

"Thank you," said Ran.

"I'm not going to regret this?" asked Gingetsu. 

"I hope not," Ran answered, shivering a little, because it was an honest answer to the same question, which the real Gingetsu—the one back in the ordinary world, anyway—had not asked him. 

"I'm not going to see you again, am I."

"Who knows?" said Ran, grinning a little. 

From the imperial tent came a confused noise, followed by a shout. 

"You'd better go now."

Suu was already skipping away. Ran followed, trusting that she knew the fastest way out of the camp. Not many people seemed to have caught on that something was the matter yet, but there was a hum of concern and even panic growing behind them that would soon have the whole camp alerted. 

"Don't look like you're hurrying," Ran called. 

Suu slowed down a little, but it was already too late. People were crawling out from under blankets and propping themselves on their elbows, giving Ran and Suu puzzled, mistrustful looks. They clearly did not belong—and Suu was carrying the plastic egg, its bright pink outside vivid even in darkness. 

"No good," said Suu. She stopped. Enormous wings unfurled from her back. They shushed with that same unusual softness in the air as they brushed past Ran's face. Feathers? he thought. But—"You'll have to hold it," said Suu. 

Ran took the plastic egg from her. It felt delicate and slippery. Inside he could feel something alive—something almost pulsing. Then they were aloft, Suu hoisting him uncomfortably under the armpits. They sailed only a few feet above the heads of the campers, who were now all getting to their feet. Some kind of general alarm had been sounded. It reminded Ran of the first train's foghorn lowing. 

The flight was over almost before Ran had taken it in. Suu had only gone a little way from the camp. She set Ran on his feet and dropped down herself. At once she was on her knees, shoveling at the earth. Ran knelt, set aside the egg, and helped her. 

"That's good," she panted, after a hurried burst of digging. "Here." She took hold of the plastic egg and gently unscrewed the top. Inside was something fairly large, wrapped in cloth. She unraveled it—her fingers shook a little, as if it were taking her an effort not to tear the wrappings off—and then a bright, glowing thing was lying on her palm, difficult to look at. It did not look very much like a seed, at any rate. 

Suu lowered it into the hole and shoveled earth back over it. 

"Now we need to help it grow."

"How?" 

"Can't you feel it?" 

Ran pressed his hand to the earth. He did feel it still, though fainter than when he had been holding it. It was ready to grow, but it was very weak. He was not sure what he could do to help it. Machines he understood. This was life. Could a Clover's power give life?

Suu laid her hand over his and closed her eyes. An expression of intense concentration came into her face. Ran could feel what she was doing—she was, somehow, feeding her magic into the seed, but it was not enough. The seed had lain too long unused. It had been cut off from life. The shell that had been meant to protect it had killed it. All he felt were its last fruitless echoes. It would not grow. 

Ran was desperately sorry for it without quite knowing why. Then he understood what Suu was doing and began to feed power to the seed as well. It grasped at him hungrily, but it still would not grow. 

And then it did. 

After a mere moment Ran found himself having to hold back. He knew he would exhaust himself if he let the seed drain him as it wanted. 

He had closed his eyes, too. Now he opened them and stared in wonder. 

"Look!"

Suu was looking up, and she was smiling. Where the seed had been buried a sapling was growing, golden and silver and russet, already waist-high and getting taller. Ran heard voices exclaiming and looked back over his shoulder. A large group of people from the camp, who had been coming after them, had stopped, forming a ragged curve some distance from the new tree. They were all clearly visible in its radiance. Gingetsu was there, next to a man who looked a great deal like Wizard Shu—the Emperor here, Ran supposed, or one of his councilors. They were both staring at the tree in awe. 

"Is this it?" Ran asked. He found he had to raise his voice to be heard. A silvery rain had begun to fall, more like pure light than water. Ran thought at first it was coming from the tree. Then he thought, for a dizzy moment, that it was coming from the stars.

The rain was filling grooves in the earth and flowing away, quickly. The dark was already filled with gleaming rivulets. The old woman who had invited them to sit at the campfire came out from the line of watchers and dropped to her knees beside one of the rivulets. There were tears streaming down her face. Soon others joined her. 

"We did it," said Suu. Her face was astonishingly peaceful in the radiance from the tree. Ran had not realized just how much misery was in her face the rest of the time. 

He laughed, because he was happy for her, and because they had been able to bring the tree to life.

* * *

**4\. Creation**

"This is the last stop on this route. Please exit the car now." 

The soothing computerized voice repeated the message. The doors hissed open. Ran and Suu, who were the only passengers, went down the steps to the sidewalk. Behind them the doors shut. Ran turned to watch the electric streetcar pull away, too quickly for him to get another look at the driver; he thought he had recognized the old woman from around the campfire, but she had looked so different in her neat uniform that it was hard to be sure. 

A breeze blew dried leaves in swirls around their ankles. It was very early morning, the sky the pinkish gray of not quite dawn. They were standing beside a modest apartment building with a small park in front of it. Across the street was a high, unbroken stone wall with treetops rising thickly above it. It stretched as far in either direction as they could see, curving gently away from them. 

It had rained in the night. The road and the sidewalk were still damp. There was a freshness in the air that was a smell and almost a sound, and a feeling of clearness and cleanness in the world. It was a feeling Ran had always imagined should come after rain, but which he had never known before. 

Above everything there was an amazing racket: the sound of birds. Birdsong, shrill or musical or mournful—cawing and twittering and shrieking. Much of it came from the trees behind the wall. There were birds wheeling above it against the lightening sky, some of them very high up and very large. The rest of the noise came from the trees in the park. 

"How beautiful!" Suu said. "Don't they sound happy?"

There was nowhere obvious to go but through the park and up to the building. 

"I'm beginning to understand," Ran said, as they walked up freshly graveled paths past trees whose leaves had a purplish look in the half-dark. Small birds startled as they passed, hopping from branch to branch and tree to tree. The sound they were making was almost overwhelming. 

At the center of the park there was a tree with, improbably, a single ripe-looking peach hanging at the end of one branch. Ran could just reach up to pluck it. He put it into the pocket of the soft blue coat he was wearing now. Suu was in a sort of puffy white jacket over a dark gray knit dress, which made her look even younger than usual. 

There was just a hint of movement behind them as they came out by a glass door leading to a lobby. Ran and Suu stopped, both turning to look. Nothing, and then out of the shadows beneath a bush darted a small, sinewy shape. It went past them in a blur, but they had seen that it was a gray cat. The cat went up an open stairwell to one side of the glass door. Suu and Ran followed. 

The cat only went up to the second floor. It slinked along the outside corridor until it came to an apartment door with empty food dishes standing beside it. There it sat down, evidently waiting. Presently it was joined by another cat, a larger orange and cream one, which had been patrolling the corridor. Both cats ignored Ran and Suu entirely. After a while, the gray one began to meow mournfully. 

There was a sound from the apartment. A light came on behind the curtained window looking onto the corridor. The door opened, and someone wrapped up to the ears in a blanket came out. Tendrils of dark curly hair trailed over the top of the blanket. The person knelt to put down fresh dishes filled with food. "No, I haven't kept you waiting, you're just early," she said. 

Suu took a step forward, then stopped. Ran thought he understood her confusion: the voice had sounded a great deal like Oruha's, but—something was wrong with it. 

"Excuse me," he said. 

She straightened and looked up, and her face was the same as her voice. She looked both younger and older than Oruha as he had seen her. There was a last hint of childish roundness in her face—Ran, though he avoided mirrors most of the time, had watched that hint hollow out in his own face—but it was a thinner face, too, with small worried lines that the real, living Oruha had never had. 

"Oh," she said. "Good morning. I hope these children didn't wake you. I started feeding them, and now I can't seem to stop. They expect it. They'll be so horribly disappointed when I—I hope someone else will be able to feed them. Or does one of you want a cat? That would be best."

"Thank you," said Ran, "but neither of us can really take one right now." He had been confused at first, but he was growing less so. This Oruha was not a Clover—she had no definite, heavy knowledge of the moment of her own death. But she was under sentence of death all the same. She was ill. That was all wrong. The familiar, suffocating weight of knowing settled over Ran. 

From the way Suu's shoulders hunched as though she were preparing to ward off a blow, he thought she could sense it, too. 

"Please don't worry. The cats didn't bother us," Suu said. "Would they let us pet them?" 

She was already kneeling as she said it. The gray cat looked steadily at her with its pale green eyes. There was, Ran thought, something similar about the two of them. Suu bowed her head. The cat came up to her, put its front paws up on her legs, and touched her forehead with its own. The orange and cream cat, jealous perhaps of the attention, went to twine itself around Ran's ankles. He leaned down and gently scratched it behind the ear. 

"They like you," said the young woman who was not quite Oruha. "Would you like to come in? I'm afraid it's a mess in here…" 

They thanked her and went inside. 

The apartment was a mess, but it was also strangely empty. Oruha flung her blanket at a chair already piled with things. Under it she was wearing a long, loose shirt. She led them into the small kitchen, where she folded down a table from the wall. There were only two chairs. Suu hopped up onto the nearly bare counter and sat swinging her feet lightly, in obvious discomfort. 

"I don't go outside very much these days," said Oruha. "The cats are a help that way—if I'm going out to buy cat food, I usually remember to get something for myself. It doesn't seem to matter very much."

"But…" Suu's voice shook. She swallowed, a surprisingly loud sound. "But you can't just sit in here and wait. You could do so much! You could... you could find happiness."

Half-hearted irritation crossed Oruha's face. "Happiness? I'm going to die… They told me so. And I can feel it, too. I'm sure you mean to be kind…"

"You're the one who's kind," Suu insisted, her voice rising, outside of her control. "You act like you don't care about anything, but you're worried about those cats, and you invited us inside because you didn't like the idea us being out on our own so early—didn't you?"

"I guess so," Oruha agreed, carefully.

"You can be happy," said Suu. Tears were leaking down her face. She had both hands tightly clasped around her knees. "Not forever, but a little while. Isn't it... Don't you think that matters?"

Oruha sighed. "I'm not sure what matters to me anymore. Isn't it worse, if there is something?"

Ran was having a hard time focusing on the conversation. In a way he was almost embarrassed to be overhearing it. Mostly, he felt like it was reaching him from a long way off. He was in some distant corner of his own thoughts. They were all under sentence of death, the Clovers, and they always had been, from the moment they had been brought into the Clover Leaf Project. Oruha had known the precise moment; Suu had accepted death as the price of leaving the cage, and the price of knowing fleeting happiness; Gingetsu was allowed to live, kept close because he was useful and not too frighteningly powerful, and so any sign of rebellion would be noticed at once; and Ran—Ran lived hand in hand with his own death. It was closer to him than anything. 

So what does that mean? he thought. That it's not fair—that none of us ever had a chance? But that isn't true at all. And even if it is...

"You can sing," Suu was saying, frantic now. "How do you feel when you sing? When you write songs?"

"Singing—I used to sing. I hear the birds singing outside every morning, and I wonder why they do it. Why does it matter so much to you?" 

"I want to help you," said Suu, "because you helped me. You don't know it—but you did. Please, listen." And she began to sing, the song they had written together, she and Oruha, in another life. 

Oruha listened. Her face was cold. Then, faltering, she began to sing along, her voice small and uncertain under Suu's clear, high tones. And then, growing in confidence, a sudden wondering spark in her eyes, she raised her voice, and it was as Ran had heard it coming over the radio, with that brave, wild joy somewhere at the back of it. She was crying now, too. 

"It's beautiful," she whispered, breaking off, "but is it true?"

"It can be," said Suu, hesitating.

There was almost too much emotion in the room to stand. Ran went out into the messy living room and left them together. He could hear them talking softly behind him, but he made an effort not to listen to their words. He was sure they were nearly done now. There was one more thing they needed to do. 

Outside the sky was still gray, still dim. But somewhere Ran thought he could see just the first note of pink morning. A white gull wheeled past the building. Then another one. 

When Oruha came back out into the living room with Suu, she looked more like herself. The strange, worried lines were beginning to smooth away, and a new enthusiasm glowed in her face. 

"I still don't understand where you've come from," she said, "but thank you." 

"This is for you," Ran said, holding out the single perfect peach to her. 

"Oh! From downstairs? But I thought they were all gone." 

"There was one left." 

She took it almost reverently. "You haven't said very much. Do you think I can find happiness?"

"I'm sure of it." 

"Somehow—I could almost be sure, too." She took the peach into the kitchen. They heard the sound of the faucet running. Unseen, she said, "There's a club in town looking for a regular performer. I think I'll offer to sing there. Oh! I think this is the sweetest peach I've ever tasted…"

* * *

**5\. The Bridge**

Dawn was coming now truly, pink and gold. The lights on the bridge still moved back and forth, though they looked like vast white birds now, their wings picking up streaks of pale color from the dawn. The pier, which somehow overlooked the bridge, still stretched into the mist, vanishing before it reached land. It was no longer rusting, but new and shining in the light. 

Suu and Ran stood together at the end of the pier. 

"This is…" Ran said. 

"The way on," said Suu. She was looking into the glowing mist, landwards. "The world we've made."

Ran nodded. That was the last piece he needed. He could see it all now. The Clover children had been born to make a new world out of the old ruined one—a burden too great for anyone. They had been too dangerous, anyway. The government had experimented on them, controlled them, locked them away, and the true potential of their powers with them. From beginning to end, it was unfair. 

Now here it was, that new world, in spite of all that. He was certain that it had been all of them working together to make it—himself and Suu, Oruha and Gingetsu, even A. Maybe that was the answer to the "why" Ran had been reaching for—it was not fair; they had never had a chance; but they could help each other bear the burden, and they could make their own happiness, as much of it as they could, for as much time as they had. This new world was for Suu—the chance she had never had.

He lifted his head and looked straight into the mist, where he could see nothing. 

"What is it like?" he asked. 

"I don't know."

"Will you be happy there?"

"Maybe." She sounded very peaceful now. "You know, I always had a choice."

"I know.

"I'm making a choice, now, too. I'm going on." She looked grave for a moment. "You could come with me, if you wanted."

The world behind them had no place for her to be happy, and that was what had brought them here. But it had not occurred to Ran that there would be a choice for him. It was a weighty choice, however sure he felt of his own answer. He turned back to look at the lights passing on the bridge he could almost see now—of course it was no bridge, and the space it covered was not filled with water. Somewhere behind it he could see the first sliver of a silver-gold sun rising over what almost looked like a smooth, endless sea, though he knew it was really something very different. 

"I don't think so," he said.

"I'm so glad we could meet again," she said. "I couldn't have done this alone." 

"No. None of us could have."

"I'm glad—that you came to find me. I didn't want you to, but I'm glad now. Thank you." 

"I'll remember you," Ran said. 

Suu nodded. Her face reflected the same brave, wild joy that had been in Oruha's voice as she sang. Ran held out his arms, and Suu hugged him tightly. "Thank you," she said again, a whisper. 

He held her by the shoulders at arm's length, then solemnly leaned down and kissed her forehead. "Goodbye." 

"Goodbye, Ran." She began to walk away towards the glowing cloud of mist, which no longer seemed like mist, but like solid light. Around them, day was breaking in earnest. If Ran turned around now, he would see what the bridge really was. But instead he stood watching Suu walk along the pier. 

Her steps faltered, and she looked back, face creased with concern. "Kazuhiko…" she said. 

There was nothing casual or sudden about this moment. She had been thinking of it, thinking of Kazuhiko, all the time, and only now did she find she had enough control over herself to risk saying his name. 

"We'll look after him," Ran said, "Gingetsu and me." It was all he could say. 

Suu did not say anything more. She walked straight into the shining mist with her head up and her shoulders relaxed. Ran thought that he could hear her humming as she faded into the mist. The world around him was fading, too, the pale blue sky, the sparkle of yellow morning light on the silvery stuff that was not water. His sight and his hearing blurred. But all the mist had burned away now. At the end of the pier he could almost see the shapes of that other world. When he was very sure that Suu was gone out of sight for good, he turned at last to look at the bridge. 

The vast white birds were all around him, soaring onward. 

* * *

_viii._

Ran collapsed. He would have fallen, if Gingetsu had not been there to steady him. 

To Gingetsu it had felt as though time had stopped. He had had a clear vision of Ran walking away from him among deep shadows, and he had known instinctively that it was up to him to hold a way open for Ran to return. He had almost missed the moment when Ran came back. There had been a voice distracting him—a girl's faint humming, almost too quiet to recognize. He heard it no longer. 

Ran seemed to be trying to say that he was all right—that everything was all right—but for the most part he could only gulp in deep breaths as Gingetsu steered him to the couch. There Ran sat shaking in the half-circle of Gingetsu's arm for a long time. Eventually he seemed to notice that he was crying. 

"It's all right," he said slowly, wiping at his eyes. "I found her. She's—" He shook his head. His expression was awestricken. 

"Tell me later," said Gingetsu. 

"Yes, I will." 

It was only then that they both noticed day had come outside. It was morning, and the storm had ended. 

* * *

_ix._

Kazuhiko had been concerned to hear that Ran had not been feeling well. He had been getting the idea lately that Ran was not entirely healthy, and that there was some kind of mystery about it. He wondered if he had been noticing that all along without paying much attention, because he had had his own troubles to worry him. 

But it was only the next day, and Ran was up and about and as busy as ever, though a little quieter than usual. Isn't that strange? thought Kazuhiko. I have this idea of him being a quiet boy, but he isn't, not at all. 

"So, what was yesterday about?" he asked. "Bet you were sleeping off a wild party."

"That's right," Ran said evenly. 

A frantic sense of wrongness came over Kazuhiko. It was too soon—it was monstrous to be joking with Ran just as if nothing had changed. 

"I feel different today," he said breathlessly. "Better—different. Why is that? I had a dream last night, and the night before that…" 

That, too, was a sign of the change. Before that he had not so much slept as fallen into a blank stupor every second or third day. Those periods of blankness had not felt anything like sleep. He imagined that they were what being dead felt like—though of course you did not wake up from that. What he felt, though he did not think of it in precisely those words, was that the weight that had been pressing him down had shifted; it was not less heavy, but he could stand up under it, hobble a few steps. 

"What did you dream about?"

Kazuhiko looked up, startling. "What?"

Ran repeated the question. 

"Suu—I think I dreamed of Suu. I could see her…" In the way of dreams, as he grasped for its remnants to describe it, it slipped away from him. 

"Did she look happy?"

"She did…"

Ran nodded. For a long while it was impossible for either of them to say anything else.


End file.
